31/03/18 – CFC "Terrible beauties: Europe, conflict and the imagination in literature and the arts".

WHAT

Call for contributions for Terrible Beauties: Europe, Conflict and the Imagination in Literature and the Arts.

TOPICS

Episodes of conflict have often proved to be watersheds in the history of Europe, its states and its peoples. Wars have involved the redrawing of maps and the reconfiguration of identities of smaller as well as larger units – of nations, localities, institutions, and the connecting networks of solidarity and allegiance. Conflict has dictated the rise and fall of states and political regimes, the slaughter and displacement of populations, the destruction of infrastructures; it has also entailed medical and technological progress, and stood at the roots of much social innovation and artistic creativity. Additionally, war has played a central role in the relationship between Europeans and people in other parts of the world, most notably Africa, Asia and the Americas in the long course of modern imperialism. From Agincourt to the Somme, from Balaclava to El Alamein, the history of civilization is inextricable from the history of catastrophe. Indeed, not a few catastrophes have been caused in the name of civilization. Check the complete call for details; The editors invite contributions of essays (6000-8000 words) about these suggested (merely indicative) topics:

European wars in literature and the arts

rout and road: narratives of disaster and displacement

heroism, patriotism, faith, adventure, trauma

poetry and battlefields, self and community

reviewing the massacre: verbal and visual reenactments of war scenarios

APPLICATION

Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2018. Send an extended abstract (250-300 words) to relational@letras.up.pt. Contributors will be notified of the editors’ decision before 30 April 2018. The collection is due to be published by a global publisher in 2019.